Thank you logicalmaster123 and uniferous for accepting to do this team debate with us. We will be affirming and they will be negating the resolution that abortion should be banned. This is my (famousdebater’s) fourth team debate on the site and I have thoroughly enjoyed all of them so far. I am sure that this would be no exception. Thank you once again for your acceptance. Now we will begin our constructive case to convince voters and our opponent’s that the right to an abortion is something that we need within society.

Framework

Our framework will be centred around libertarianism. Within the ideology of libertarianism, there is great controversy on the subject of abortions because it all depends on whether the fetus is alive or not. If the fetus is alive then libertarians are against abortions because libertarians are individualists and therefore value the life of the individual heavily [1]. If the fetus is not alive then libertarians advocate abortion because libertarians belief in a less powerful and restrictive government. In our first contention we will prove the fetus to be living. For now we will explain why we should have an abortion under libertarian belief.

Capitalism magazine explains this well by saying,

“A fetus does not have a right to be in the womb of any woman, but is there by her permission. This permission may be revoked by the woman at any time, because her womb is part of her body... There is no such thing as the right to live inside the body of another, i.e., there is no right to enslave... a woman is not a breeding pig owned by the state (or church).” [2]

She is the individual that libertarians prioritize, due to their individualist ideologies [2]. Since libertarians believe in a less restrictive government the libertarian outcome is self-explanatory. The government should NOT be involved in something so personal to the person since by involving themselves in this person’s choice, you are restricting them and are ultimately violating libertarian ideology [3].

The Fetus Is Not Alive

Firstly, it is important to note that only 1.4% of abortions occur after 21 weeks into the pregnancy [3,4]. This means that that most abortions are done before the fetus is even formed. It is just an embryo, and an embryo is proven to be not alive, it is not a debate like with the fetus. It is a fact when referring to the embryo that it is not alive [5].

Now that this is covered, I will address the issue of the fetus - which is already mitigated due to the minute percentage of abortions that occur at this period into the pregnancy.

There are 7 categories in which life can be identified and this is often put into the acronym: MRS GREN to make it easier to remember [6]. The fetus only meets two of these.

If one of these wasn’t met then the fetus would not be considered alive. The fetus was only able to meet 2 of these. Making it considered not alive scientifically (6).

Illegal Abortions

When an abortion is legal there is absolutely no point in having an illegal abortion because they have been proven to be very dangerous and expensive. If abortion are legal then illegal abortions will negatively correlate (11). These illegal abortions have been known to kill both the mother and the baby and sometimes result in extreme suffering on the mother’s part (11). Mothers are not doctors (most of the time) so these illegal abortions also occur later than 24 (and even 28) weeks meaning that the babies suffer too (11)!

Did you know that:

“13% of pregnancy-related deaths worldwide are related to complications of unsafe abortion.”(12)

This statistic is shocking but demonstrates my point very well. These unsafe abortions are illegal abortions and this is what is currently happening because abortions are illegal in places. They have no option to a safe abortion and are so desperate for abortion that they attempt to undergo illegal and unsafe abortions. Therefore, we can conclude that there are a huge number of unsafe abortions (13% of all pregnancy related deaths). From this we can then follow up an argument suggesting that making abortions illegal will not necessarily get rid of all abortions therefore rendering our opponent’s aim to be mitigated.

Underage teenagers

“19% of teens who have had sexual intercourse become pregnant each year. 78% of these pregnancies are unplanned. 6 in 10 teen pregnancies occur among 18-19 year olds.” (12)

This statistic is significant for many reasons. If this occurs amongst 18 - 19 year olds then this is extremely bad. Having to look after and care for a child ruins their chances of going to university. Your twenties are your most important period of your lives according to many sources (13,14,15). Having to look after a child in this period of time is extremely stressful and prevents you from getting proper qualifications and more importantly, it prevents you from getting a full time job and a house. Children are extremely expensive to have and having a child at the time when you should be looking for a job makes income problematic. On top of this you will have to pay huge amounts of money.

“To raise a child born in 2013 to the age of 18, it will cost a middle-income couple just over $245,000, according to newly released estimates from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. That's up $4,260, or almost 2%, from the year before.”(16)

Now let's compare this to the average income of a family:

“The typical U.S. households pulls in $51,371 per year.”

Teenage parents are most likely to make a lot less than this but let's take this statistic anyway. Assuming that this ‘average’ family spend no money at all on anything. It will still cost them almost 5 times their yearly income to equate to that amount. Of course they will need food, clothes, mortgage, heating, electricity etc. on top of this sum of money.

If this seems like a lot you should double the cost of a child figures (assuming that they have another child), what will you do then? Not allow an abortion? Allow these teenagers to pay almost $500,000, earning (most likely) less than $51,371 per year.

Gender Equality

Pregnancies have a huge impact upon people’s lives - in particular the mother. As Sarah Weddington stated:

“A pregnancy to a woman is perhaps one of the most determinative aspects of her life. It disrupts her body. It disrupts her education. It disrupts her employment. And it often disrupts her entire family life.” (17)

She continued:

“[And we feel that], because of the impact on the woman, this … is a matter which is of such fundamental and basic concern to the woman involved that she should be allowed to make the choice as to whether to continue or to terminate her pregnancy.” (17)

This was a very important case showing that without the right to a termination, you are denying women a right and therefore what my opponent is advocating is gender inequality.

The philosopher, Judith Thomson said:

“If abortion rights are denied, then a constraint is imposed on women's freedom to act in a way that is of great importance to them, both for its own sake and for the sake of their achievement of equality .... and if the constraint is imposed on the ground that the foetus has a right to life from the moment of conception, then it is imposed on a ground that neither reason nor the rest of morality requires women to accept, or even to give any weight at all.” (17)

This emphasizes my previous point in regards to the denial of gender rights and equality and therefore we come to the following conclusion:

P1: Denying women an abortion is gender inequality

P2: Gender inequality is a violation of human rights

C1: Abortion legalization stops gender inequality rights

C2: Abortions should be legalized

Mother’s Life

“The risk of death associated with childbirth is about 10 times as high as that associated with abortion.” (12)

This means that in almost ANY circumstance, an abortion is safer than a pregnancy - even if the abortion is for reasons unrelated to health.

99% of all pregnancy related deaths occur in countries that have no option to an abortion (18). The correlation is evident between the lack of abortion and the maternal mortality. By the end of 2015, 303,000 mothers would have died due to the lack of abortion availability (18).

Conclusion

To conclude we have shown through strong evidence that abortions should be legalized and we hand it back over to our opponents for their case. The resolution is affirmed.

Thank you agreeing to debate this with us famousdebater and TheProphett. We will be using this round for our arguments and will use the following round for our rebuttals to your case.

Observations

The debate is about abortion, BoP is shared. We will be talking about why abortion is bad, and should be illegal. Good luck to famousdebater and TheProphett for the team debate. Let’s begin!

Arguments

1. Fetus is a human being

There is much dispute as to when life starts. Some people believe it starts at 3 months were the nervous system is created. Some believe at 6 months. Some believes life started around 1-2 months. When the medical community is all unclear on when life starts, and there is no definite answer, the solution is not to assume that life does not exist. The answer is to assume that life does exist at all stages. You can find more information in here [1] (Look at the sources category where it is [1].

There is also another reason. This is because science proves this.

“Fertilization is a sequence of events that begins with the contact of a sperm (spermatozoon) with a secondary oocyte (ovum) and ends with the fusion of their pronuclei (the haploid nuclei of the sperm and ovum) and the mingling of their chromosomes to form a new cell. This fertilized ovum, known as a zygote, is a large diploid cell that is the beginning, or primordium, of a human being.

The development of a human being begins with fertilization, a process by which two highly specialized cells, the spermatozoon from the male and the oocyte from the female, unite to give rise to a new organism, the zygote.

You can find lots of information that fetus is a human being in those two sources. The main point is, if fetus is not a human being, what is it? Pro needs to answer this question if he disagrees that fetus is not a human being. To add, they need food.

2. Libertarian Grim Dark Framework

Our framework will be based on the negative case that libertarians hold. Since we have now concluded that the fetus is living, we can successfully implement the state’s obligation to the individual as necessary in a libertarian society [6]. Libertarians value people as necessary elements of society [7].

It's no coincidence that today's argument over abortion comes at a time when freedom in general is threatened in the United States, as well as in other Western countries. Nor was it accidental that genocide, abortion, and euthanasia were all practiced under Hitler, and that all three characterize totalitarian states. Even today, Communist governments vary their positions on abortion strictly on economic calculations of whether more or fewer slaves are needed. [5]

Every life saved is of huge value to the libertarian and as Ron Paul put it, these action can be compared (to some extent), as actions deemed acceptable by Hitler. Abortion (as we have concluded), is murder. Therefore, by legalizing abortion we legalize murder. This links into our next contention in regards to state obligation.

3. Need to prevent murder

Since the fetus is a human being, the state has the obligation to prevent murder of human life. Abortion is equivalent to murder, which must be sanctioned by the state. Murders are bad= Abortion is bad. If Pro disagrees, he has to explain why murders are not bad, which makes abortion not bad [3] [4].

4. Promote Discretion

We think when pregnant mothers can not longer go through abortion, the incentive for couples to take extra care will increase. This is a good thing because people are now taking responsibility for their actions. Even if it doesn’t, at least we are making people accountable for our actions.

Thank you for posting such a strong round in an attempt to negate the resolution. In this round we will refute your arguments. Our goal is to affirm the resolution that abortion should be legal, our opponents must argue the opposite and therefore they negate. We will now refute the negative case.

Observations

We agree with our opponent’s observations and we agree with the positions in which we will both be arguing under these split burdens.

The Fetus is a Human Being

Firstly, our opponent’s make a number of assumptions here. They state that we must assume that life exists from the beginning but offer no reason why. They simply tell us to read their source. This is unacceptable since they are not offering the argument, they are simply relying on the source to argue for them. They don’t even quote from the source, they just tell us to read it.

It is interesting how our opponents have explained the process of how the embryo is formed however they offer no explanation as to why the embryo is alive. In fact, in our contentions we proved for a 100% fact that the embryo is non-living [1]. Therefore, our opponent’s must prove that the fetus is alive. Attempting to prove that life starts from the very beginning is pointless because it is a scientific truism that this is not the case [1].

The science is interesting and it is the lead up to life but it is not life. Another point worth noting is that our opponent uses Keith Liam Moore’s book as a source of information. Keith Liam Moore was a lecturer who lectures in regards to surgery [2]. His study in embryology comes at a much later period in his life and he has been severely critiqued by atheists and others for basing his research with little evidence and instead making it so that it coincides with the Qu’ran [2]. Without any evidence other than the process of human reproduction (provided by our opponents), we find that their argument fails. Our opponents (again), tell us to look in their sources for more information which is not something that we should be doing. They should be going through their own sources and quoting information from them.

Framework

Being against abortion whilst simultaneously following libertarianism as your political ideology is completely contradictory. We have shown that biologically the fetus is not living as well as by disproving our opponent’s case. Since libertarians are individualists (as our opponents agree upon), this means that they value the individual in society heavily [3]. By denying them their right to an abortion you are restricting them which is an evident violation of both libertarianism and individualism. Libertarianism is violated simply due to the restrictions - which is the complete opposite of libertarian ideology which states that its objective is to minimize state restriction [4]. Individualism is violated because the individual’s opinion is not being valued. We will re-state what we said in our initial framework since this is the perfect scenario in which it can be used.

Capitalism magazine explains this well by saying,

“A fetus does not have a right to be in the womb of any woman, but is there by her permission. This permission may be revoked by the woman at any time, because her womb is part of her body... There is no such thing as the right to live inside the body of another, i.e., there is no right to enslave... a woman is not a breeding pig owned by the state (or church).” [4]

This the final line of this clearly shows that the women is not owned by the state which is what the negative case essentially argues. This perfectly follows on from my explanation of ideological violations previously stated. It shows refers to the stupidity of state restriction at the end and the rest of it shows that the women is the individual and therefore she has control and authority over her own body - thus explaining why the negative case violates individualism.

Need to prevent murder

Our opponents states that we must prove that murder is not bad however this is unnecessary since we have already proven the fetus to be non-living. Since the fetus is non-living and the definition of murder is specific to humans [5], this means that the termination of the fetus is not murder.

Promote Discretion

This completely ignores cases of rape and teenager irresponsibility. People can have children from the age of 12. Sometimes even lower [6]. Almost half of all teenage girls have been forced into doing some sort of sexual act [7]. This evidently wasn’t considered in our opponent’s case since they reference to people needing to learn from their actions. Since our opponents have been requesting that we answer many questions throughout the course of their round, let us ask our opponents just one question. Did Lina Medina - the youngest ever pregnant women aged just 5 years old [6] - deserve to deliver her pregnancy without the option to an abortion?

In regards to everyone else (that this contention was aimed at), this is also a faulty argument. Firstly, it violates the framework which is based on libertarianism. Libertarians value the individual [4] and by restricting the individual of an abortion so that they can ‘learn their lesson’ is a complete and evident violation of their own argument. This contradictory position presented by our opponents is enough to presume Pro alone. The resolution is affirmed vote Pro!

Conclusion

To conclude, we believe that we have successfully refuted our opponent’s contentions and framework through strong and reliable evidence. We thank our opponents for their acceptance to participate in this debate. As previously stated our opponents have provided a contradictory framework to their contentions, thus concluding that the resolution is to be affirmed and voters ought to vote Pro based on this.

We thank our opponents for their arguments. We will rebut their case. BoP is shared.

1. The Fetus is not alive

This is rebutted by our first argument, fetus is a human being. Our argument states that fetus is a human being. Also, if a fetus is not a human being, what is it? That is why it is a human being.

Pro says the seven parts

1. Movement: The fetus can move

2. Respiration: Cannot, however they can breathe. This is a different way from we do, but they can. [8] [9]

3. Sense: Cannot

4. Growth: Babies grow the most in mom’s belly, when it is a fetus. [9]

5. Reproduction: This is not needed because some people, or children cannot do this.

6. Excretion: This is rare but possible.

7. Nutrition: Fetus gets nutrients from mom. [10]

1 is no need, 4 of them the fetus can do, 2 they cannot, so fetus is a human being.

Also a fetus develops in the mom's body! [9]

"Week One: At about the sixth day, the growing child attaches to the wall of the mother’s uterus. The uterus’ nutrient-rich lining welcomes the tiny tenant and soon the child is sending out the “all systems go” chemical signal that can be detected on a home pregnancy test."

"Weeks 3 & 4: The baby’s heart is beating! The heart begins to beat as early as 18 days after conception and is beating strongly by 21 days. The baby’s development is rapid during this time. Between three and four weeks, the baby’s head and spinal column become easily distinguishable, and arm buds appear. Legs will begin to appear just days later. The umbilical cord forms, transporting to the child oxygen and nutrients absorbed from the mother’s blood by the placenta."

So on...

"Weeks 10 & 11:s://www.ortl.org......; border="0" alt="" align="right" data-mce-src="https://www.ortl.org......; data-mce-style="max-width: 100%; height: auto; vertical-align: middle; color: #414141; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 23.8px; white-space: normal;">The baby’s little feet are perfectly shaped. The baby also has eyelids, fingernails and fingerprints. The baby can even grasp an object placed in the hand! The kidneys are beginning to form urine and the baby begins to mimic breathing. All the baby’s body systems are in place and active. The baby has a skeletal structure, nerves and circulation. From this point on, there is only growth in the size and maturation of the organs already present."

So on...

"Weeks 39 & 40: Her lungs are maturing and surfactant production is increasing and fully prepared to take on the outside world! 15% of your child's body is fat. Since she hasn't learned to shiver yet, these fat stores will help regulate his temperature. "

Now we know that a fetus develops like a human being!

2. Illegal Abortions

Our opponent’s present us with a statistic stating that a large percentage of illegal and unsafe abortions occur in the grand scheme of pregnancy related deaths. Our opponents assume that this will be the case however they can only make this assumption based on limited evidence. They don’t know for certain that illegal abortions will occur and by assuming that this will happen because of failing to legalize abortions is not necessarily the case. The range of points that could influence this is huge! These illegal abortions could be occurring because of the wealth of the country being low or because healthcare is limited in these areas. These assumptions are limited and have little impact as such.

3. Underage Teenagers

Asserting that your 20s are the most important period of your life is subjective. Furthermore, the statistic showing that 18-19 have a high pregnancy rate may be true however these teenagers are old enough to take responsibility for their actions and they are old enough to have sex [11]. When they are 18-19 they should be careful about their actions. This rebuttal also covers costs. If they cannot afford to have a child then they shouldn’t be consenting to sex. The solution is simply to raise awareness of the consequences - not to legalize abortion (ie. murder).

4. Gender Equality

We agree that pregnancies are very important however this is why the fetus shouldn’t be aborted. It isn’t gender equality to allow women to murder and men to not. That just shifts gender equality so that men are unequal. Women shouldn’t be allowed to murder since it violates libertarian belief (as our opponent’s agree on), and therefore it is unfair to say that one gender is allowed to murder (to a certain extent) and others are not. The women does have a choice but they have a choice at a much earlier stage. There choice arises when they have sex. They have the option to say yes or no. When they say yes, they risk the consequences that follow. That is the women’s choice and since the man also has the choice to say yes or no, this means that both genders gain an equal choice.

5. Mother’s Life

There are risks with everything. There is a risk that right now my laptop may overheat and explode (as unlikely as this is). There is a risk that an aeroplane might crash into my house. When you consent to doing something you need to let yourself know of the consequences (as we said above), under the heading of consequences comes risks and that includes deaths. If death is a consequence then it is a consequence that they need to be aware of.

Thank you to logicalmaster123 and uniferous for an exciting debate that I’m sure has been an educational experience for all of us. I (famousdebater), would also like to thank TheProphett for helping out throughout the debate despite us having some problems with timing in terms of getting online at the same time to collaborate. With that, we will begin our final round of counter rebuttals.

Framework

Our framework is dropped and is therefore extended on our behalf. Due to this, voter’s ought to buy our framework over our opponent’s.

The Fetus Is Not Alive

Our opponents basically concede this contention when they say:

“1 is no need, 4 of them the fetus can do, 2 they cannot, so fetus is a human being.”

Firstly, when are opponents say that 1 of them is not needed they need to explain this further. This is a list that biologists have compiled [2], whilst we do not doubt the credibility of our opponents, I think that we can both agree that PhD level biologists know more about this topic than all of us [3] (since we are all younger than 18). Therefore, the accusation that one of them is not needed is not supported strongly enough to stand.

They then claim that the fetus can do 4 of these. This is not necessarily true however this is irrelevant because of what they say next.

Their final claim is that the fetus cannot meet 2 of these. This is essentially an automatic concession to the entire contention due to the fact that the fetus must meet ALL of the points to be considered living, not some, not a majority, ALL [1]. This ultimately means that our opponents have conceded this contention.

After our opponents ‘attempted’ to refute our contention they went into a lot of detail explaining that the fetus grows. We never said that the fetus does not grow and growth (as previously stated), is only one of the 7 requirements to classify something as living / nonliving [1]. Our opponents effectively end up with a long and irrelevant rebuttal. This contention is enough to vote Pro on alone due to the weight that it bares and the fact that it also negates our opponents contention stating that the fetus is alive.

Illegal Abortions

Starting off, our opponents immediately pull our statistical percentages out of context and change it to make no sense. The evidence is presented in our opening argument as follows:

We did not state nor suggest that a “large percentage of illegal and unsafe abortions occur in the grand scheme of pregnancy related deaths.” In fact, this is the opposite of what we stated. It clearly says that 13% of pregnancy related deaths worldwide are related to complications of unsafe abortions. Backing up cryptic objections to our arguments with twisted quotes from our arguments provides little substance and no value to the case of our opponents. It is not an assumption that something will happen because it isn’t legalized. The colonists smuggled goods into the colonies because foreign trade was banned by the British. Americans distributed alcohol in a clandestine and law breaking manner during the prohibition era. As long as abortion is not legalized, those who truly seek and desire will use any means necessary to obtain it. It is not a question of “if” they will, but it is a question of “when.” Next, we see that our opponents bring up other contributing factors to illegal abortions. These could be limiting factors in places where abortion is illegal, but not in those which have legalized it. In a clear attempt to mitigate the effectiveness of our case, our opponents have used circular reasoning to try to distract from the values of our argument. Trying to list other causes of illegal abortion is futile, and from the point they are trying to argue, is the same as saying we should stop the use of penicillin because some people are allergic to it, or we should keep X illegal because Y sometimes happens and is a small contributing factor. Legalizing abortion would make it have a wide spread availability, and therefore decrease the number of desperate people who would undergo illegal abortions. We have successfully eliminated all attacks on this argument, and therefore our argument remains unopposed.

Underage Teenagers

Our opponents begin by stating our use of the twenties as a time period of our lives of importance is subjective is invalid. They ignore the use of three sources of evidence on this statement, and our use of this statement is correct and adequate in the context of our argument. Having children unexpectedly is common in the late teens (18-19), as shown by source number twelve of our opening argument. Raising children is a time consuming process and the twenties is when most people make important and crucial decisions about their futures and education. Abortion then may become a necessity if the carrying of the child is accidental and the mother or couple knows that they will not be able to adequately care for the child. We have no idea why our opponents brought up the subject of consent, because consent is not a problem when engaging in intercourse because there are various means of protection. No matter how hard you try to hammer things into one’s skull, when alcohol and influencing substances become a factor, the judgement of those in their late teens can become clouded and misguided. In the event that this does happen, and the mother or couple knows they cannot care for the child in the manner that a good parent should, then they will seek an abortion. Legalizing abortion is the best solution if we want to ensure that the lives of those coming into their early twenties do not stagnate then and there. I, TheProphett, would like voters to take note of the use of no reasoning at all by our opponents. They use big font to make their statements look important, but giving a sentence of objection does not provide any value or substance to their claims. Therefore, I can say without a doubt that this argument stands dropped by our opponents.

Gender Equality

Our opponents start their rebuttal of this subject with the presentation of the notion that men become unequal when the woman chooses to have an abortion. This is irrelevant and I do not know why our opponents placed this in their argument. As shown by our evidence in our opening arguments, the fetus grows because of the consent of the mother, and therefore is subject to the decisions of the mother, and does not have any unalienable right that prohibits removal. Saying that men are being made unequal by a process that is physically impossible for them to perform is amusing at best, but is illogical and irrelevant. Furthermore, allowing “women to murder” is not against libertarian beliefs; murder is against federal law in all civilized nations around the world. For the final time, abortion is not generating unwarranted gender inequality towards men, it is just giving women the jurisdiction over a process which men cannot physically perform. As presented in our previous defensive statement, consent is not the issue in abortion, there can be influencing factors such as alcohol and drugs that cloud judgement, and there are forms of protection when engaging in intercourse. Lastly, it is absurd to suggest that the man who contributed to the formation of the fetus has the authority to decide what is done about a woman’s body; that is gender inequality itself. Our opponents again provide little substance and we have successfully deflected any would be attacks against our case.

Mother’s Life

In this graph, the rate of maternal deaths in live births is shown for the past 25 years [5]. Death should not be used as a scare tactic to discourage intercourse or let alone pregnancy, because it is a rare occurrence in the “grand scheme of pregnancies.” We have provided evidence and data to suggest that abortions are safer than the live birthing, and mothers who want the operation should be given the opportunity to undergo it. Those who need it should be given it, because there is no room for error in the lives of mothers going through labor. Once again, this was an rebuttal filled with little substance and silly analogies. Therefore we conclude that our argument has been dropped because there has been no reasoning or logic pitted against it.

Overview

Most, if not all of our opponent’s objections to our arguments lacked substance, reasoning, and logic. Save a few sentences of contention, there were no sound arguments made against our case, and I would like voters to take note of that. Throughout this debate we have provided tangible and empirical evidence in favor of our arguments, and our opponents have all but ignored the statistics and given empty objections, much like a cat chasing the projection from a laser pointer to no avail. Voters take note of the rebuttals that were devoid of reasoning and substance.

Conclusion

We would like to thank our opponents for a debate which has proved to be an intelligent discourse about the topic of abortion. Though we do not agree with your position, we would like to thank you for dutifully posting your rounds and not forfeiting; forfeit results in an incomplete debate lacking fun or challenge. However the votes turn out, good luck!

I guess that my partner is not doing anything... Well, I will try to cover most of the points.

Framework

Okay, we accept that BoP is shared. This is the last round of our team debate, famousdebater, ThePhrophett, and me, and uniferous. I thank my opponents for not forfeiting. We do not believe that my opponents are correct, but the results are from the votes. I thank them for a good debate, and we will try to defend our case as much as we can.

Defense (from my opponents rebuttals)

1. Fetus is not a human being

We did offer a reason later than life exists in the beginning when we tried to rebut your arguments, and we offered that science proved that. Yes, we said to read the source, sorry about that, it was just because if we did, we will go above the charecter limit by a few thousand charecters. We will try to explain most of the points in this round if we have the charecters.

We did explain that the embryo was living, and the fetus was living, by the rebuttals of fetus is alive, and our argument. Also, we are stating this by meaning that embryo is alive.

Okay, we quoted his source. Pro gives no reason why this source fails. The evidence is in the source. That is a reliable source. Yes, we told you to look in the source, because we had no charecters. I will try to explain somethings in this round.

Well rest of my defense got deleted and there is only one hour left, so lets just do a sentence each.

2. Framework

Our opponents concede this argument

3. Abortion prevents murder

We have proven that the fetus is living, which means this argument is not dropped.

4. Promote Discretion

Pro almost states anything about this, and the argument is not all dropped.

Just one for thing to add: Pro's final round he said that because all are not true, the fetus is not alive. This is false. children can not reporduce. Does this mean that they are not-human? I don't think so.

Conclusion

Because Pro fails to rebut our arguments, vote for Con. Sorry for the briefness in the end.

This was a pretty one sides debate in my opinion. Pro began by giving his arguments that a fetus isn't alive. He does this by using the 7 standards of life that I'm sure we've all learned in high school science classes. Out of all of these, if 1 category isn't met, then that means the organism in question isn't alive. This list of standards is the reason why viruses aren't considered alive. Pro successfully shows that a fetus can't respire on its own, and can't sense until the late stages of pregnancy. He also shows that it can't reproduce, nor independently take in nutrition. If Con concedes even ONE out of these 7 standards [which they did], then it is conceded that a fetus isn't alive. This negates quite a few of Con's later contentions, the "libertarian framework" and the "preventing murder" arguments. Pro's points of illegal abortion and underage teenagers were also insufficiently refuted by Con. Con attempts to show how the unsafe abortions stat is unreliable, however Pro defends this point by using historical examples [Prohibition] to prove his point. What I've stated here is enough to award Pro the win, as they have shown that a fetus isn't alive, using the 7 standards of life, and won the unsafe abortions contention. I will talk about one more really important argument however. In the debate Pro makes a mention of underage children [ <12]becoming pregnant without consent. This point was completely ignored by Con. The health effects of a young child forced to carry out a pregnancy is enough to legalize it, even if it's only in that case. Remember, conditional legalization still passes as legalization if you look at the resolution, and would award Pro the win.

To conclude, the win goes to Pro, because they showed that a fetus isn't alive, thereby negating quite a few of Con's arguments, and their argument about underage pregnancies was also dropped by Con.

You do realize that we didn't concede the framework. YOU did and we pointed this out. You completely ignored our framework and we said that YOU concede this. For some reason you said that we conceded the framework. Why was this?